The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (59 page)

The unification of the 1,290-square-mile Oaxaca Valley was a significant accomplishment, though it pales in comparison to the 4,028-square-mile Big Island of Hawai’i. The rulers of Monte Albán, however, had barely begun to expand. Indeed, the available radiocarbon dates suggest that they may have begun subduing some of their weaker neighbors even before their conquest of Tilcajete.

Some 1,800 years ago the city of Monte Albán covered 1,028 acres, and archaeologist Richard Blanton estimates its population at 15,000. Its period of aggressive military expansion may have gone on for several centuries, until Zapotec rulers were receiving tribute from an estimated 8,000 square miles.

FIGURE 51.
   The façade of Building L at Monte Albán was covered with carved stones depicting slain or sacrificed enemies. Most were shown naked, and a number had blood scrolls indicating genital mutilation. These three examples also bear hieroglyphic inscriptions that may include the victims’ names.

A significant problem in the study of first-generation states is that 1,000-acre cities and 8,000-square-mile tribute territories are too large for individual archaeologists to investigate in detail. What the archaeologists working in Oaxaca did was form a consortium of researchers. Members of this consortium then collaborated on a full-coverage survey of the Oaxaca Valley, including the city of Monte Albán and the hundreds of towns, villages, and hamlets in the political hierarchy below it. Some veterans of the original survey have now extended their efforts beyond the limits of the valley, into neighboring regions with names such as Cuicatlán, Ejutla, Miahuatlán, Sola de Vega, Peñoles, Tilantongo, and Huamelulpan. A bare-bones list of collaborators would include Richard Blanton, Stephen Kowalewski, Gary Feinman, Linda Nicholas, Laura Finsten, Andrew Balkansky, Charles Spencer, and Elsa Redmond.

Strategies for Territorial Expansion

The archaeological record makes it clear that the Zapotec had three different strategies for territorial expansion. The region of Sola de Vega, 40 miles southwest of Monte Albán, was so sparsely occupied that it could be annexed simply by sending in colonists. The Ejutla region, 30 miles south of Monte Albán, appears to have been taken over peacefully, possibly as the result of strategic marriage alliances among noble families. Ejutla thrived as the result of its incorporation by Monte Albán; its craftsmen imported seashells from the Pacific coast and converted them to ornaments for the Zapotec capital.

Yet another strategy was required by the region of Cuicatlán, 50 miles to the north of Monte Albán. In contrast to the temperate Oaxaca Valley, whose alluvial floor averages 4,800 to 5,500 feet above sea level, Cuicatlán lies in an arid tropical valley whose elevation averages 1,600 to 2,200 feet. With irrigation, Cuicatlán could produce both cotton and tropical fruits unavailable in Oaxaca Valley.

The leaders of Cuicatlán’s villages chose not to surrender their autonomy to the Zapotec. Unfortunately for those leaders, their population was organized only as a rank society. Monte Albán’s more experienced warriors made short work of Cuicatlán and left behind a wooden rack displaying the skulls of 61 local victims. Such a rack, known in Zapotec as a
yàgabetoo,
was designed to intimidate anyone who resisted incorporation.

The Zapotec reorganized the Cuicatlán landscape, moving its surviving population from the river floodplain to the piedmont. This left the floodplain free to be irrigated with newly built canals and aqueducts. The Zapotec intensified irrigation in Cuicatlán much as Mir Silim Khan had intensified it in Hunza, and the outcome was presumably similar: he who built the canals got to decide how and by whom they were used.

Recall that Mir Silim Khan also built forts in his territory. The Zapotec did something similar. At the northern extreme of the Cuicatlán district, near a mountain pass leading to the valley of Tehuacán, they built a hilltop redoubt called the Fortress of Quiotepec. The pottery and tombs of this fortress were in typical Monte Albán style. To the north of the fort, however, Spencer and Redmond discovered a no-man’s-land some four miles wide. Beyond this buffer zone, dating from roughly 2,200 to 1,800 years ago, the pottery no longer resembled that of Monte Albán.

Whom was the Fortress of Quiotepec designed to discourage? We believe that it marked the frontier between Monte Albán’s expansion and that of Teotihuacan, an even larger first-generation state that we will discuss later in this book.

The Chain Reactions That Create More Kingdoms

Monte Albán, to be sure, was not able to annex every region it desired. The Zapotec expanded most successfully against their weaker neighbors, relying on diplomacy to bring the others in line.

In the mountains to the northwest, however, lay a series of well-populated valleys whose inhabitants had no intention of being incorporated into the Zapotec state. Included were the valleys of Tilantongo, Nochixtlán, and Huamelulpan. At the time of the Spanish conquest, all these valleys were occupied by speakers of the Mixtec language.

Full-coverage surveys by Andrew Balkansky, Stephen Kowalewski, and Verónica Pérez Rodríguez suggest that the movement of the Zapotec to the fortified summit of Monte Albán set off a chain reaction among its neighbors to the northwest. Soon the leaders of these valleys were concentrating their supporters on defensible summits as well.

One of the first hilltop communities to appear was La Providencia in the Tilantongo Valley, which seems to have been founded at roughly the same time as Monte Albán. A few centuries later, while Monte Albán was working to subdue Tilcajete, La Providencia lost population to Monte Negro, a larger community on an even higher mountain. Monte Negro’s occupants built elite residences for their leaders and erected a number of temples. We believe that Monte Negro was in the process of creating its own kingdom when it was abruptly abandoned. Contemporaneous with Monte Negro was Cerro Jazmín, a hilltop community in the Nochixtlán Valley.

The largest of all these defensible mountaintop settlements, however, was Huamelulpan, located in the valley of the same name. Balkansky suggests that Huamelulpan took over from an earlier chiefly center called Santa Cruz Tayata, much the way that Monte Albán took over from San José Mogote. Neighboring Mixtec societies, in other words, nucleated and fortified themselves to keep Monte Albán at bay; the resulting political consolidation allowed them to create embryonic kingdoms of their own.

Inequality and Administrative Hierarchy in the Zapotec State

Let us turn now to the internal workings of the Zapotec state. One of the benefits of the full-coverage survey just mentioned is that it reveals multiple levels in the administrative hierarchy.

Eighteen hundred years ago—two centuries after Monte Albán’s defeat of Tilcajete—there were 518 communities in the Oaxaca Valley. The largest was Monte Albán itself (Level 1), with an estimated 15,000 inhabitants. Level 2 of the hierarchy consisted of six towns with estimated populations of between 900 and 2,000. There were palaces and elegant tombs at Monte Albán and its Level 2 towns, indicating that people of noble birth were in charge there. All six towns were less than a day’s walk from Monte Albán, making intercommunication easy. All these larger settlements had multiple temples.

Level 3 had at least 30 villages with populations estimated at 200 to 700. There were no palaces at these smaller communities, but several had at least one temple. Finally, the fourth, or lowest, level of the hierarchy consisted of 400 small villages, with no evidence of temples or palaces. These settlements brought the estimated population of the valley to more than 40,000.

The stone monuments, ceramic sculptures, and tomb murals of Monte Albán all confirm that the Zapotec state was a monarchy. Rulers are shown sitting on thrones, sometimes costumed as jaguars or wearing the feathers of quetzal birds from the distant cloud forest (
Figure 52
). Not until the Spaniards conquered Oaxaca in
A.D.
1521, however, did the rest of the world get eyewitness descriptions of Zapotec society.

FIGURE 52.
   This funerary urn from Tomb 103 at Monte Albán portrays a royal ancestor in his role as mighty warrior, carrying the severed head of an enemy by its hair. In addition to jadeite ornaments and a headdress of quetzal tail feathers, he wears a mask made from the dried skin of a flayed enemy’s face. The urn is 20 inches high.

From the Spanish accounts we conclude that Zapotec society was divided into at least two major strata, hereditary nobles and commoners. At the apex of the noble stratum was a king
(coqui)
and his principal wife
(xonaxi).
A major ruler, who might be referred to as a
coquitào,
or “great lord,” lived in a
quihuitào,
or “beautiful royal palace.”

Archaeologist Alfonso Caso excavated a number of palaces and royal tombs at Monte Albán. A typical palace consisted of eight to 12 rooms around a central patio. Under the patio floor was the royal tomb, reached by a stairway that allowed the king’s descendants to make additional offerings on the anniversaries of his death.

Tombs 104 and 105 of Monte Albán, laid out roughly 2,400 years ago, were two of the most magnificent. Tomb 105’s walls bore polychrome murals that show royal men and women (perhaps relatives or ancestors of the deceased lord) accompanied by their hieroglyphic names. The door of Tomb 104 was closed with a large stone, carved with the hieroglyphic names of what are almost certainly royal ancestors. Such carving or painting of royal genealogies helped the descendants of the deceased ruler confirm their right to rule.

The ruling class was made up of
tija coqui,
the royal lineage;
tija joana,
lineages of major nobles; and
tija joanahuini,
lineages of minor nobles. The Spaniards compared these lineages to the various ranks of European nobility.

The stratum of Zapotec commoners also had its gradations in prestige. There were landed commoners, landless serfs, and slaves. Free commoners belonged to
tija peniqueche,
“lineages of townspeople,” and held corporate rights to parcels of land dispersed through the valley floor, piedmont, and mountains. These varied parcels were the Zapotec equivalent of Hawai’i’s pizza-slice transects from coast to mountain.

Social inequality was expressed in terms of address, clothing, diet, and other forms of behavior. Nobles were addressed with terms equivalent to “your grace.” Even they, however, had to bow and remove their sandals in the presence of the king. Nobles wore bright cotton mantles, feather headdresses, and jade ornaments in their earlobes and lips. Some male nobles had 15 to 20 wives. They dined on venison and enjoyed drinks flavored with chocolate, a plant imported from the lowlands.

Commoners, on the other hand, wore agave fiber mantles and were allowed much less ornamentation. Instead of venison, they ate the flesh of dogs, turkeys, rabbits, and local small game. Only the wealthiest of commoner men could afford a second wife.

Zapotec rulers sometimes appointed trusted commoners to bureaucratic posts. In addition, there were some social institutions in which both nobles and commoners regularly collaborated. Within the military the officers were of noble birth, while the foot soldiers were conscripted commoners. Officers wore body armor of quilted cotton, and their valor was rewarded with costumes depicting them as pumas, jaguars, hawks, or eagles. Foot soldiers went to battle in loincloths.

Within the religious establishment, the highest priests were of aristocratic birth. Often they were the younger sons of nobles, outranked by their older brothers and therefore unlikely to inherit their father’s title. Like all members of the noble stratum, they were given a religious education that was denied to commoners. This difference in education helped maintain inequality.

The high priest’s assistants were commoners who underwent special training. These minor priests, according to the Spaniards, virtually “lived in the inner room of the temple.”

The temple itself was called
yohopèe,
“the house of the vital force,” reminding us that the Zapotec had a concept of sacred life force like mana among the Polynesians or hasina among the Merina. Anything that moved, including lightning bolts, flowing blood, and the foam on a cup of hot chocolate, possessed pèe. Any plant that induced visions of the spirit world, such as jimson weed
(Datura),
morning glory, strong tobacco, or hallucinogenic mushrooms, was considered sacred. Zapotec priests were trained in bloodletting, human and animal sacrifice, and ritual drug use. Nobles had their own special rituals, because after death they would metamorphose into semidivine ancestors, living among the clouds and serving Cociyo—Lightning—the most powerful being in the Zapotec cosmos.